One Foot Off the Gutter Read Online Free PDF Page A

their parents, laughing and skipping, shouting to each other in pipsqueak thin voices.
    â€œThese people got too many fucking kids,” Bellamy said. “Where do they get the money to feed them?”
    I worried about the citizens, whether they could take care of themselves in the street. There were so many assholes out there, running psycho. It was irrelevant if the citizens were rich or poor; worrying came with the job. That’s what cops had medical insurance for, to check into a hospital now and then because the worrying was bound to make you sick.
    I wasn’t fond of the citizens, but it was my sworn duty to protect them from the depredations of assholes. But if I was honest and if Bellamy was, too, we’d tell you most citizens were potential assholes. There was only a thin blue line of cops such as Bellamy and myself to keep the two forces from uniting and destroying the city.
    â€œDid I tell you I inherited Rod Jensen’s uniform, Coddy?”
    â€œOh, yeah? How did you do that?”
    â€œAfter he died, his wife said I could have it. She came up to me at the funeral. She said it would fit me.”
    An asshole was somebody who stepped out of line, like
that joker over there pissing in the gutter, right in front of those old Nicaraguan ladies selling the Watchtower. What aggressive freaks those evangelicos were. Seventh Day Adventists and Pentecostals; they were always talking to people in the street, getting in their faces, knocking on the doors to every house and apartment in the neighborhood. It was a wonder they didn’t get themselves killed. On top of that, they kept San Francisco from being one hundred percent Catholic like it was supposed to be.
    â€œHold on a minute, Bells.”
    I angled the squad car into the lane nearest the curb. Bellamy turned on the bullhorn and shouted into his lapel mike:
    â€œListen up, you sonuvabitch! Quit pissing in front of those old ladies or I’ll drag you downtown!”
    The guy shoved his penis back into his dirty trousers. He smiled inanely at the police car and staggered off. I pulled the squad car back into the flow of the southbound traffic. Bellamy settled back in his seat and watched the young girls on the sidewalk. They looked good to him, sweet as candy. But myself? I couldn’t escape from my own private notions about assholes.
    They were a strange breed. Unlike your typical old school hoodlum, this generation of criminals considered themselves superior to cops. You could see it in their eyes whenever you busted one of them. They didn’t want to submit to an arrest. With that said, things tended to get out of hand. A cop had to employ extra muscle to subdue a prisoner. But if a little blood was spilled, you could always count on a citizen to come
charging up to spout some nonsensical crap about civil rights and police brutality.
    â€œI think I need something to eat, Coddy.”
    â€œIt ain’t lunch time yet. You know that.”
    Civil rights: talk about some overworked garbage. Civil rights were a thing of the past; it belonged in the days of the horse and the buggy. Civil rights looked good behind glass in a museum. But in the streets, we were experiencing lucifer rising. The Mission was a zoo filled with psychopaths. Assholes were causing mayhem and citizens were always complaining, making our job longer than ever.
    â€œLook at these boys, Coddy.”
    At Bellamy’s invitation, my eyes flickered over the rear view mirror. Then I decided, what the hell. I switched lanes to stare down a car load of cholos in a ’63 Impala that had been chopped, lowered and painted an apple red flake. Those kids had been well schooled in the science of cars by their older brothers and fathers. The Impala was a nice ride. We nodded at them, giving them a mal de ojo from perdition when the Impala passed the squad car in the outer lane.
    I was still arguing with myself about who was worse, the citizens or the assholes, when